I am not much of a cook. Generally, I avoid it because I hate the kitchen toil that it causes. But I thought I would try this because it sounded pretty easy, and it would give me an example of Japanese home cooking which I've never encountered. I went looking for recipes and it turns out that this is an every-family-makes-it-different sort of dish. So I picked one recipe and I improvised quite a bit.

I didn't have the right sized pot. And the proportions were all whacky. And I substituted some of the stuff (though I kept the mirim and the soysauce, of course). I used carne asada for the meat, because it was the closest thing to Japanese thinly sliced beef that I could find at the store. It stuck to the pot and probably burned a bit. And it ended up mushier than it looks in the picture. But it was really very tasty. I did not serve it with rice as is traditional, since I think the Japanese are pretty much nuts with all the starches they serve (in this case potatoes + rice).

Back in my dating days, I'd have saved this dish for one of those voila evenings.